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Monday, April 30, 2012

socialismThe Obama campaign apparently didn't look backwards into history when selecting its new campaign slogan, "Forward" — a word with a long and rich association with European Marxism.

Many Communist and radical publications and entities throughout the 19th and 20th centuries had the name "Forward!" or its foreign cognates. Wikipedia has an entire section called "Forward (generic name of socialist publications)."

"The name Forward carries a special meaning in socialist political terminology. It has been frequently used as a name for socialist, communist and other left-wing newspapers and publications," the online encyclopedia explains.

The slogan "Forward!" reflected the conviction of European Marxists and radicals that their movements reflected the march of history, which would move forward past capitalism and into socialism and communism.

The Obama campaign released its new campaign slogan Monday in a 7-minute video. The title card has simply the word "Forward" with the "O" having the familiar Obama logo from 2008. It will be played at rallies this weekend that mark the Obama re-election campaign's official beginning.

But of course, you didn’t hear — the networks didn’t cover the victory speech Tuesday after Mr. Romney finally sealed up the Republican presidential nomination, and the New York Times, America’s paper of record, had only a front-page photo referring readers to a brief back-of-the-book story.

Throughout the ponderous primary season, one theme was constant, droned about nonstop by the mainstream media: “Republicans aren’t excited about their candidates.” It wasn’t true, of course — campaign seasons are about weighing options, checking alternatives, and then picking the best — but the Democratic talking point buzzed across the wires for months.

(CNSNews.com) – Kofi Annan’s precarious Syria peace mission will cost the world’s taxpayers almost $7.5 million, according to a document seeking U.N. General Assembly approval for the budget.
Over the 10-month period ending December 31, Annan and 17 other officials attached to the mission will account for a combined $3,022,300 in “salaries and common staff costs.”

Responding to GOP criticism of “spiking the football" on the anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death, President Obama said Monday there hasn't been "any excessive celebration" by his administration.
Speaking to reporters a day before the one-year anniversary, Obama took issue with the notion that his administration has tried to politicize the issue.

It is fashionable to be jaded about a presidential campaign, to complain there’s nothing new and tune it out. Not this one. Watch it, or you’ll miss the antics of an incumbent who has no scruples and no regard for the majesty of his office.

President Obama’s team put out an ad praising him for sending in Navy SEALs to kill Usama bin Laden and doubting whether Mitt Romney would have done it. To further exploit the one-year anniversary of Bin Laden's death, he gave an interview to NBC in the Situation Room, from where he observed the raid. And The Wall Street Journal revealed that the Obama campaign has an enemies list, a group of Romney donors it singles out by name on a Web site while declaring some got rich “at the expense of so many Americans.”

As outrageous as those breaches of decency are, they are merely the latest extension of Obama’s polarizing presidency. His tenure threatened, he is growing desperate, almost pathologically so. And it’s only April.

Where once it was rare for a politician or a commentator to accuse a president of lying, it happens routinely now. Obama’s speeches are filled with distortions and fabrications. Even members of his own party don’t trust him, regarding him as ruthlessly selfish. “An uncurious man,” said one.

House Speaker John Boehner called the president’s use of Air Force One for campaign events disguised as official business “pathetic” and added: “This is the biggest job in the world, and I’ve never seen a president make it smaller.”

It is a train wreck for America, unfolding before our eyes. Sad to say, but it makes me nostalgic for the days of Bill Clinton, when it was only sex that shamed the Oval Office.

Michael Goodwin is a Fox News contributor and New York Post columnist. To continue reading his column on other topics, including John Edwards, click here.

In advance of a major Occupy rally planned for Tuesday, President Obama delivered a speech this morning filled with class warfare rhetoric.

The president warned union members that Republicans would rather give "rich folks" more tax breaks, than invest in the American worker.

"Republicans in Congress would rather put fewer of you to work rebuilding America than ask millionaires and billionaires to live without massive new tax cuts on top of the ones they’ve already gotten," Obama declared in a speech to to construction union members at the Hilton hotel in Washington.

"I mean, if you ask them, what’s their big economic plan in addition to tax cuts for rich folks, it’s dismantling your unions. After all you’ve done to build and protect the middle class, they make the argument you’re responsible for the problems facing the middle class," Obama added.

The president praised the unionized middle class as the for contributing to an economy based on the middle class.

"You believed prosperity shouldn’t be reserved just for a privileged few; it should extend all the way from the boardroom all the way down to the factory floor."

Tuesday, May 1st has been recognized by labor organizers as International Workers’ Day.

It is usually celebrated by left-wing activists as a day to protest for workers rights, by creating a general strike in protest for unequally.

This year, the Occupy movement has declared a general strike in solidarity with union workers to protest economic inequality.

"Don't go to work or school on Tuesday!" proclaims the Occupy Wall Street website, "For the first time, workers, students, immigrants, and the unemployed from over 125 U.S. cities will stand together for economic justice."

Sunday, April 29, 2012

The most politically brazen feature of Obamacare has always been its looting of Medicare. About half of Obamacare’s costs are to be covered with money taken from an already nearly bankrupt program for seniors. And the most politically perilous aspect of this ploy is Obama-care’s cuts in Medicare Advantage funding, which would cause many seniors to lose their preferred health plans. Under the implementation schedule stipulated in Obamacare, many seniors would either lose their plans, or learn that they are going to lose them, before the election that will likely decide Obamacare’s—and Obama’s—fate.

Anticipating a senior revolt, the administration took action. It ran millions of dollars’ worth of taxpayer-funded TV ads featuring Andy Griffith saying things like, “That new health care law sure sounds good for all of us on Medicare!” It mailed out full-color, taxpayer-funded propaganda brochures singing the same tune. It repeatedly claimed (and continues to claim) that money taken out of Medicare to fund Obamacare would—magically—also stay in Medicare and be used to extend its solvency.

But the administration didn’t stop there. Instead, it launched an $8.35 billion “demonstration project” to postpone the vast majority of Obamacare’s Medicare Advantage cuts until after what Obama likes to call his “last election.” In truth, this isn’t really a demonstration project at all. It’s something closer to the opposite: an attempt to keep Obamacare’s effects from being demonstrated until it’s too late for voters to respond.

Saturday, April 28, 2012

The U.S. Federal Reserve estimates that of the 12 million American homeowners who have negative equity, 3 million--or 1 out of every 4--are borrowers with FHA-insured loans.

Part of the problem, say experts, is the fact that FHA loans require miniscule down payments on homes, some as little as 3.5 percent of the purchase price.

"Low down payment lending in a weak housing market and weak economy begs the question whether we are setting up the FHA to have a multitude of failures down the line," said CoreLogic's senior economist Sam Khater.

According to Reuters, one out of every ten home loans taken in the last two years--which represents more than 1 million Americans--"now owe more on their loans than their homes are worth."

"This is creating a new wave of underwater borrowers," said Gary Shilling, a veteran financial analyst. "We have all three branches of government trying to keep people in four bedroom houses who can't afford chicken coops."

As Americans struggle in the Obama economy, the housing market continues to flounder. Indeed, 7.5 percent of all home loans taken as recently as four months ago are now under water.
"The overwhelming majority of the U.S. is still seeing home prices decline," said CoreLogic senior economist Sam Khater. "Many borrowers continue to be quickly wiped out."
The problem, say experts, is the massive increase of FHA-insured loans issued over the last several years:

FHA-insured loans were begun during the Great Depression and have traditionally been used to enable lower income Americans to get mortgages.

Historically, FHA loans accounted for 8 percent to 12 percent of the mortgage market. According to the FHA, this rose to 30 percent in late 2009 and to about 50 percent for first-time buyers at the height of the financial crisis.
States like Florida have been among the hardest hit. Since October 2010, home values in that state have plunged an average 30 percent and more than 50 percent since the height of the 2006 housing bubble.

Last month President Barack Obama said he is not satisfied to "sit by and wait for the housing market hits bottom."

"That politician who curries favor with the citizens and indulges them and fawns upon them and has a presentiment of their wishes, and is skillful in gratifying them, he is esteemed a great statesman."

Defying a veto threat from President Obama, the House voted Friday to extend federal student loan subsidies for another year, and cover the added cost by slashing a prevention fund from Democrats’ health bill.

The 215-195 vote puts the House GOP on a collision court with the Senate, where Democrats also want to extend the subsidies — but would rather raise taxes on a type of income from business partnerships to fund the new spending.

“My God, do we have to fight about everything?” said House Speaker John A. Boehner in an angry speech from the House floor accusing Democrats of trying to create a political fight where there is general agreement.

But Mr. Boehner had to rely on Democrats to get the bill through, after 30 Republicans balked and said they couldn’t support it.

In all, 13 Democrats voted along with 202 Republicans for the measure, which would extend into the next school year a 3.4 percent interest rate for government-backed loans. Without the legislation, interest rates will rise to 6.8 percent on July 1.

Friday, April 27, 2012

"Shame on Barack Obama for diminishing the memory of September 11th and the killing of Osama bin Laden by turning it into a cheap political attack ad. This is the same President who once criticized Hillary Clinton for invoking bin Laden 'to score political points.'
"This is the same President who said, after bin Laden was dead, that we shouldn't 'spike the ball' after the touchdown. And now Barack Obama is not only trying to score political points by invoking Osama bin Laden, he is doing a shameless end-zone dance to help himself get reelected.
"No one disputes that the President deserves credit for ordering the raid, but to politicize it in this way is the height of hypocrisy.
"The Obama campaign asks whether Mitt Romney would have made that decision. Of course they want to focus on this one tactical decision because the other decisions this President has made have harmed our national security.
"He turned his back on the people of Iran when they rose up to end their tyrannical, terrorist-supporting, Holocaust-denying government, giving them no assistance as they were crushed in the streets.
"He has repeatedly thrown our ally Israel under the bus and jeopardized our shared security interests.
"He tried to bring Khaled Sheikh Muhammed, the mastermind of 9/11, and other Al-Qaeda terrorists into the middle of New York City to stand trial in a civilian court.
"He disregarded the advice of his military commanders and pulled all of our troops out of Iraq, and Al-Qaeda is making a comeback there as a result.
"He disregarded the advice of his military commanders again by telling our enemies that we are leaving Afghanistan and then putting our mission and our troops at risk by short-changing our commanders on the ground.
"He watches passively while the Assad regime in Syria, Iran's closest ally, kills thousands of its own people in an unfair fight, and his response to this mass atrocity is to create an 'Atrocities Prevention Board.'
"With a record like that on national security, it is no wonder why President Obama is shamelessly turning the one decision he got right into a pathetic political act of self-congratulation."

BY SCOTT THURM

Thirty-five big U.S.-based multinational companies added jobs much faster than other U.S. employers in the past two years, but nearly three-fourths of those jobs were overseas, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.

Those companies, which include Wal-Mart Stores Inc., International Paper Co., Honeywell International Inc. and United Parcel Service Inc., boosted their employment at home by 3.1%, or 113,000 jobs, between 2009 and 2011, the same rate of increase as the nation's other employers. But they also added more than 333,000 jobs in their far-flung—and faster-growing— foreign operations.

Try this thought experiment: You decide to donate money to Mitt Romney. You want change in the Oval Office, so you engage in your democratic right to send a check.

Several days later, President Barack Obama, the most powerful man on the planet, singles you out by name. His campaign brands you a Romney donor, shames you for "betting against America," and accuses you of having a "less-than-reputable" record. The message from the man who controls the Justice Department (which can indict you), the SEC (which can fine you), and the IRS (which can audit you), is clear: You made a mistake donating that money.

May God bless and keep you always
May your wishes all come true
May you always do for others
And let others do for you
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung
May you stay forever young
May you stay forever young.

May you grow up to be righteous
May you grow up to be true
May you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you
May you always be courageous
Stand upright and be strong
May you stay forever young
May you stay forever young.

May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift
May your heart always be joyful
And may your song always be sung
May you stay forever young
May you stay forever young.

House Speaker John Boehner labeled President Obama’s speeches on student loans in three battleground states “pathetic” and called on his campaign to “pony up” by reimbursing the Treasury for the cost of the two-day trip.

Boehner said Obama is waging “fake” fights to win re-election. “The emperor has no clothes,” he said.

“This week the president traveled across the country on taxpayers dime at a cost of $179,000 an hour insisting that Congress fix a problem that we were already working on,” Boehner said Thursday at the Capitol, referring to student loan interest rates set to double on July 1. ”Frankly, I think this is beneath the dignity of the White House. Democrats and Republicans knew that this was going to take effect.”

“Democrats and Republicans fully expected this would be taken care of, and for the president to make a campaign issue out of this and then to travel to three battleground states and go to three large college campuses on taxpayers’ money and to try to make this a political issue is pathetic, and his campaign ought to be reimbursing the treasury for the cost of this trip.”

Boehner continued: “Here’s the president wasting time on a fake fight to try to gain his own re-election. These are the types of political stunts, and frankly they aren’t worth and worthy of his office. This is the biggest job in the world and I’ve never seen a president make it smaller…it’s as simple as this, ‘the emperor has no clothes.’”

Medicare is on a steady downward course to financial ruin and everyone should care. Its trustees admit that Medicare’s main trust fund could run out of money as early as 2017. Since the U.S. Treasury is under no obligation to make good the shortfalls, the checks to doctors, hospitals and pharmacies will be even less than they are today, covering a fraction of the actual cost of care, potentially shutting off access to health care for millions of seniors.

Medicare’s role in our nation’s health care system should not be underestimated. With 48.7 million beneficiaries and an annual price tag of more than $500 billion, Medicare’s share of the federal budget is 13 percent and growing. Today’s payroll deductions and retiree premiums cover less than half of Medicare’s annual price tag. In fact, for Medicare to pay for itself, payroll taxes would need to increase by 31 percent, and the cost to beneficiaries would more than quintuple to nearly $8,000 annually.

Thursday, April 26, 2012

France’s decay serves as a warning to America. For centuries, Paris was the cradle of Western civilization. The French, however, have hit hard times. Their country is dying, and most French citizens don’t seem to care. This threatens to be our fate as well.

France’s first-round presidential elections were held on Sunday. The Socialist Party’s candidate, Francois Hollande, slightly edged out President Nicolas Sarkozy, 27.9 percent to 26.7 percent. The two will head into a runoff on May 6. Mr. Hollande is widely expected to win, granting the Socialists almost complete control of the French political system.

Mr. Sarkozy’s defeat should come as no surprise. The French conservative committed the cardinal sin in politics: He overpromised and underdelivered. In 2007, Mr. Sarkozy ran on a winning platform of economic reform, law and order and restoring France’s national identity. He has failed on every count. The French economy is stagnant, weighed down by a bloated welfare state. High taxes and runaway spending have led to economic sclerosis, severe unemployment and soaring deficits. France’s debt-to-gross-domestic-product (GDP) ratio is at 90 percent - the tipping point at which it is almost impossible for a nation to avoid bankruptcy.

Key US states face slow job growth
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By James Politi in Washington
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Job growth in the 14 states pivotal to the presidential election has advanced at a slower pace than in the rest of the US over the past year

Read the full article at: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0f071d06-8fa9-11e1-9ab1-00144feab49a.html?ftcamp=published_links/rss/world_us/feed//product

"All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate would be oppression."

Candidates for Senate and House seats are refusing to say how they would vote on key issues facing Congress, claiming they shouldn’t have to make up their minds until after they’re elected.

It’s a major leap of faith being requested of voters: Give me your vote and send me to Washington, but don’t expect answers about how I’ll vote once I get there.

Faced with specific questions about how they would vote on hot-button issues, most candidates dodge a direct answer, deploying rehearsed replies about how they’re still weighing the issue or how a piece of legislation has both pluses and minuses.

Sixty years ago, on April 8, 1952, President Harry Truman directed his secretary of commerce, Charles Sawyer, to seize and take over operation of the nation’s steel companies, in order to give steelworkers a wage increase and avert a strike threatening steel production during the Korean War. Truman’s action led, in short order, to one of the most famous and important of all modern Supreme Court decisions—Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, the “steel seizure case.” The decision dominated the nation’s headlines in the spring of 1952, just as the Obamacare case has gripped the nation’s attention this spring. Indeed, the two cases have more than that in common.

Youngstown is the landmark case that invalidated Truman’s action. The Court held, in sweeping and categorical terms, that the president may not rule by decree, conscripting private industry to carry out his commands. The chief executive may only execute laws passed by Congress, according to their terms. He may not make up laws of his own and then enforce them.

In February, President Obama an-nounced his intention to order private insurance companies to provide contraception and abortion drug coverage free, as his way of “accommodating” religious institutions’ conscientious objections to being forced to provide their employees coverage of those items under Obamacare. Like Truman six decades ago, Obama has proposed in effect to seize a national industry and tell it what to do, without any warrant in enacted law. Like Truman’s steel seizure, Obama’s insurance seizure is flat unconstitutional—as unconstitutional as anything any president has attempted to do—and Obama does not even have Truman’s excuse of a national security crisis.

The Obama campaign machine is firing up, and its most important fuel is the media. For the millions of Americans who get their news from the networks, most cable programs or the average kneejerk liberal newspaper, it’s a foregone conclusion that President Obama will get a second term. This is supposedly because the economy is rebounding and Mitt Romney is a flawed candidate. None of these pro-Barack assumptions are true.

Exhibit A in the People v. Barack H. Obama is the Rasmussen Reports poll that measures what percentage of voters believe America is on the right track versus those who fear we are heading in the wrong direction. According to data released a week ago, 65 percent of Americans say the nation is going the wrong way. A mere 27 percent think the country under Mr. Obama is going the right way. Those are devastating numbers for an incumbent.

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

On the night he definitively vanquished his last opponent not named Ron Paul, Mitt Romney unveiled a general-election speech. He promised that “a better America begins tonight,” and focused on jobs, wages, and the cost of living in the context of the clash between President Obama’s vision of a government-centered society and his vision of an opportunity society. Crisp, pointed, and optimistic, it was Romney’s best speech of the campaign. We were especially glad to hear him call out the president’s reelection team for its obsession with tawdry distractions.

The Romney campaign has been adept at counter-punching against the nonsense lately. But to win a series of tactical victories in foolish controversies could still amount to a strategic loss. The Obama campaign cannot run on the president’s record, since his major legislative achievements are unpopular. It cannot run on the state of the country, which the public considers deeply unsatisfactory. It cannot win a choice-of-visions campaign because most people prefer a smaller government to a bigger one. We therefore expect repeated attempts to divert the public’s attention from the fundamental questions before it with the asinine and irrelevant: The war on women. How Romney transported his dog in 1983. His tax returns.

Romney would be doing a triple disservice to the country if he allowed the campaign to proceed on these lines. First, because the country deserves a more serious discussion of the stakes of the election. Second, because this sort of campaign would make it more likely that the worse alternative prevailed. Third, because an electoral victory achieved on these terms would reduce President Romney’s ability to make accomplishments on the scale the country requires.
The alternative campaign strategy is to stick to the basics, as outlined in the speech last night: Obama’s policies are not working; they will not work, because Obama misunderstands the limits of government and the genius of our country; and there is a better way. On that last point, Romney can be more specific than Obama was about his agenda in 2008 without getting bogged down in details. To some extent, Romney already has offered such specifics and begun to draw the appropriate contrast.

Obama’s economic agenda consists of raising taxes, particularly on investment, while allowing spending on entitlements to grow so much faster that debt levels rise with no end in sight. The Romney alternative is to rein in the growth of entitlements to keep taxes from rising to unprecedented levels, and to reform the tax code so that revenues can be raised at the lowest possible cost to the economy. Obama would direct subsidies to companies and industries he considers promising. Romney should reject that policy as a certain path to corruption and failure, and instead allow the market to identify tomorrow’s rising economic sectors within the context of an impartial rule of law that only government can provide. Obama would dramatically expand the federal government’s management of health care in the illusory hope of finding efficiencies. The Romney alternative should be to remove obstacles in the way of small businesses and individuals who seek health insurance.

Reporters recently overheard Romney telling some donors about some policies he was considering, including shutting down the Department of Housing and Urban Development and eliminating the tax breaks for state and local taxes and for mortgages on second homes. Important steps both, but footnotes to what a presidential campaign should be about. Romney needs to take the campaign to a higher level and keep it there, so that the public may start to see him as more presidential than our current president.

Student Loans: The Next Bailout?
CNBC.com | April 25, 2012 | 08:49 AM EDT
Here’s what we do know about student loan debt: it’s roughly $1 trillion in size, greater than either auto or credit-card debt and second only to mortgage debt in the U.S.

Borrowers in their 30s today owe $28,500, on average. The debt burden has soared just as — and partly because — the recession hit, so younger graduates carrying the highest balances are hit with the double whammy of a weak job market (that still isn’t showing any sign of rapid improvement).

And this all comes as globalization and technological change have upended once-reliable career paths, wiped out many mid-level professional jobs and leave low-paying fields in health, food and beverage services, and retail as among the fastest growing job markets over the next decade.

Oh, and consider that student loan debt remains one of the most difficult types to forgive or discharge in bankruptcy, in part because the federal government (i.e. taxpayers) made or guaranteed 80 percent of all outstanding student loan debt as of last year. And finally, that once loans in deferral or forbearance are excluded, the delinquency rate on student loan debt was an estimated 27 percent as of the third quarter of 2011, according to a study by the New York Fed.

Worried? Americans should be.

Still, acknowledging the problem is perhaps the easiest step. Much more difficult is the question of what to do about it. Not surprisingly, young, heavily indebted grads are calling for forgiveness in full or in part of their student loan burdens. Petitions on advocacy website Change.org include calls for federal student loan interest rates to be capped at 3 percent or eliminated altogether. (Indeed, President Obama is currently among those urging Congress not to allow the interest rate on federally subsidized Stafford loans, which are aimed at low — and middle-class borrowers, to double to 6.8 percent on July 1, matching the rate for unsubsidized loans.)

And yet the trouble with those initiatives, or with forgiving student loan debt in whole or part, is threefold. For starters, the straight mathematics: the losses from any such debt reduction scheme will have to be borne by someone, most likely taxpayers, at a time when government finances are already stretched.

Second is the issue of “moral hazard,” that is, rewarding and implicitly encouraging imprudent behavior rather than punishing it. (Of course, it is easier for the public at large to demand that over-leveraged banks be punished for imprudence than 24-year-olds trying to further their education.)

And third is the question of how to keep future graduates from accumulating a mountain of student loan debt just as large, if not larger, than the one just leveled.

It is this third issue which perhaps is most pressing — and most vexing —and which also offers the most opportunity for innovation. Levying an “education tax,” making college free and assigning students to institutions based on a lottery system? Abolishing “college” altogether for more specialized trade institutions instead, while at the same time requiring a “gap year” of liberal arts prior to entry? Offering high-school grads the choice between student loans or business loans to fund new ventures? These all seem ridiculous, but then so too is our current state of affairs.

Our current system, in fact, has so failed that it may now be exacerbating income inequality (by saddling low-income students with high loan balances and shaky job prospects), economic malaise (by keeping would-be homebuyers stuck in costly rentals because of already high debt loans and/or poor credit histories, thereby damaging both the housing market and potential consumer spending), and long-term economic vitality (by hampering household and family unit formations with a higher share of 20- and 30-somethings currently stuck at home with mom and dad).

This, in fact, is why it may be far less costly for taxpayers in the long run to forgive as much of the current student-loan burden as possible. Before doing anything like that, however, there must be systematic reform to ensure debt loads simply won’t start to pile up again. (Not to mention the need for repercussions for those borrowers who most benefit from any such initiative, for the sake of fairness.) That is why the need for innovation or overhaul is so pressing.

One thing is certain: if we do nothing to alter the status quo, we will have no one to blame but ourselves for the bleak outcome.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said the House will vote Friday to prevent a jump in student loan rates, offsetting the cost with money from a “slush fund” in the president's healthcare law.

Boehner announced the vote during a hastily called press conference late Wednesday after the president personally attacked Boehner for opposing the loan during a speech at the University of Iowa.

The Speaker ripped the president for campaigning on the issue, saying he was trying to create a fight out of thin air.

“This week the president is campaigning and trying to invent a fight where there is none and never has been on this issue of student loans,” Boehner said. “We can, and will fix the problem, without a bunch of campaign style theatrics.”

Reflecting on President Barack Obama’s first term, former Obama administration advisor Van Jones said the president “let his opponents,” specifically the tea party, “set him up” by being “so bipartisan.”

“There’s a lot of economic pain out there, and progressives don’t have organizations and campaigns that speak to that economic pain,” said Jones, adding that the tea party “figured” this out before any other group.

“They [tea party] understood that people were sitting on a white hot stove out there, and if Democrats weren’t going to point at the financial elites, they were going to point at the government elites,” said Jones during a discussion at the Center For American Progress about his book, Rebuild The Dream, on April 20. “Somebody got to get blamed, and part of the problem with the president was by being so bipartisan and trying to not, you know, try to be one country about everything, he let his opponents set him up.”

“So, there he is, standing there with a whole bunch of problems next to him, now he’s either a UN rescue worker or the unabomber, right? I mean, what is he? Is he the person that caused it, or is he the person who’s fixing it? Well, if you can’t, in that same frame, point to the person who’s causing it, it’s easy for you to get set up and that’s what happened to him.”

Jones said progressives could “learn” a lesson from Obama allowing the tea party to blame “government elites” for the struggling economy.

“He [Obama] wasn’t willing to point out again and again to the American people, because he was trying to bring us all together, who really caused it and he let the tea party say, ‘well, he caused it. It’s the government that caused it, it’s these government elites that caused it.’ And that is, I think, a lesson that we have to learn,” Jones said.

“We’ve got to be able to tell a complete story,” he added. “We don’t want to name a villain as progressives. We don’t want to point a finger as progressives, even if it’s telling the truth, and that means the finger gets pointed at the wrong place.”

"When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that an old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had only one before."

President Obama has shown an appalling lack of courage in the debate over entitlement reform. He has admitted in public that Medicare, America's old-age health insurance program, is unsustainable as it currently exists. Yet he has failed to set forward any reform proposal in the four budgets he has issued as president, knowing that reforms could be politically painful.

Obama has also exploited the issue politically to attack those brave enough to propose reforms. His treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, put it best in testimony before Rep. Paul Ryan's, R-Wis., House Budget Committee: "[W]e're not coming before you today to say, 'We have a definitive solution to that long-term problem.' What we do know is, we don't like yours." But as Republicans heap well-deserved scorn upon Obama, they should also bow their heads in shame. They, too, are to blame for saddling future taxpayers with unsustainable burdens, as this week's report from Medicare's trustees reminds everyone.

When Republicans last controlled both chambers of Congress and the presidency, during the Bush administration, they created the Medicare prescription drug plan, known as Medicare Part D. At the time it passed in 2003, Part D was the largest new entitlement since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. Since it went into effect in 2006, its price has steadily climbed, and it is expected to cost $117 billion in 2021. Because Part D was created without any concern for sufficient sources of funding, it adds $14.3 trillion to the government's long-term entitlement deficits. By 2040, the program will cost more than 1 percent of the nation's gross domestic product.

The Medicare trustees' report should serve as a cautionary tale for Republicans. The program they created is projected to cost the federal Treasury $807 billion through 2021, and this figure does not include contributions from state governments and premium payments.

The figure is also higher than it might have been otherwise because Democrats recently expanded Part D as part of the Obamacare law. As originally envisioned, Part D had a cost containment mechanism by which seniors were responsible for a portion of high but not yet catastrophic drug costs -- the so-called doughnut hole. But Obamacare eliminated this, which should serve as a reminder for the GOP: Any entitlement that Republicans create, Democrats will eventually expand.

Conservatives are well within bounds to apply appropriate blame to Obama for his cowardice in confronting the great challenge of the day -- an unsustainable entitlement state created by previous generations' overpromising. But they must not go easy on Republican politicians; if anything, they should push back even harder against Republican attempts to avoid the tough business of reform or to expand unsustainable entitlements for their own political benefit. If Mitt Romney becomes president and has a Republican Senate and House, conservatives will be the last line of defense against a repeat of the Bush disaster.

To follow, not lead; to suffer, not prosper; to despair, not dream — I’d start with energy.

I’d cut off America’s supply of cheap, abundant energy. Of course, I couldn’t take it by force. So, I’d make Americans feel guilty for using the energy that heats their homes, fuels their cars, runs their businesses, and powers their economy.

I’d make cheap energy expensive, so that expensive energy would seem cheap.

I would empower unelected bureaucrats to all-but-outlaw America’s most abundant sources of energy. And after banning its use in America, I’d make it illegal for American companies to ship it overseas.

If I wanted America to fail …

I’d use our schools to teach one generation of Americans that our factories and our cars will cause a new Ice Age, and I’d muster a straight face so I could teach the next generation that they’re causing Global Warming.

And when it’s cold out, I’d call it Climate Change instead.

I’d imply that America’s cities and factories could run on wind power and wishes. I’d teach children how to ignore the hypocrisy of condemning logging, mining and farming — while having roofs over their heads, heat in their homes and food on their tables.

I would never teach children that the free market is the only force in human history to uplift the poor, establish the middle class and create lasting prosperity. Instead, I’d demonize prosperity itself, so that they will not miss what they will never have.

If I wanted America to fail …

I would create countless new regulations and seldom cancel old ones. They would be so complicated that only bureaucrats, lawyers and lobbyists could understand them. That way small businesses with big ideas wouldn’t stand a chance — and I would never have to worry about another Thomas Edison, Henry Ford or Steve Jobs.

I would ridicule as “Flat Earthers” those who urge us to lower energy costs by increasing supply. And when the evangelists of commonsense try to remind people about the law of supply and demand, I’d enlist a sympathetic media to drown them out.

If I wanted America to fail …

I would empower unaccountable bureaucracies seated in a distant capitol to bully Americans out of their dreams and their property rights. I’d send federal agents to raid guitar factories for using the wrong kind of wood; I’d force homeowners to tear down the homes they built on their own land.

I’d make it almost impossible for farmers to farm, miners to mine, loggers to log, and builders to build. And because I don’t believe in free markets, I’d invent false ones. I’d devise fictitious products — like carbon credits — and trade them in imaginary markets. I’d convince people that this would create jobs and be good for the economy.

If I wanted America to fail …

For every concern, I’d invent a crisis; and for every crisis, I’d invent the cause.

Like shutting down entire industries and killing tens of thousands of jobs in the name of saving spotted owls. When everyone learned the stunning irony that the owls were victims of their larger cousins — and not people — it would already be decades too late.

If I wanted America to fail …

I’d make it easier to stop commerce than start it — easier to kill jobs than create them — more fashionable to resent success than to seek it. When industries seek to create jobs, I’d file lawsuits to stop them. And then I’d make taxpayers pay for my lawyers.

If I wanted America to fail …

I would transform the environmental agenda from a document of conservation to an economic suicide pact. I would concede entire industries to our economic rivals by imposing regulations that cost trillions.

I would celebrate those who preach environmental austerity in public while indulging a lavish lifestyle in private. I’d convince Americans that Europe has it right, and America has it wrong.

If I wanted America to fail …

I would prey on the goodness and decency of ordinary Americans. I would only need to convince them … that all of this is for the greater good.

If I wanted America to fail, I suppose I wouldn’t change a thing.

Ryan Houck is the executive director of FreeMarketAmerica.org, a project of Americans for Limited Government. His column was inspired by Paul Harvey’s “If I were the Devil” published in 1964 and 1996.

Read more at NetRightDaily.com: http://netrightdaily.com/2012/04/if-i-wanted-america-to-fail/#ixzz1t0iSJ4Jw

(CNSNews.com) – Medicare faces an unfunded liability of $38.6 trillion, according to the Medicare Trustees report released Monday.

The unfunded liability is the amount that has been promised in benefits to people now alive that will not be funded by the tax revenue the system is expected to take in to pay for those benefits. (The Medicare Trustees calculate the unfunded liability for a period of 75 years into the future.)

The $38.6 trillion in unfunded benefits Medicare is expected to pay over the next 75 years equals $328,404.43 for each of the 117,538,000 households the Census Bureau said there were in the United States in 2010.

“From the 75-year budget perspective, the present value of the additional resources that would be necessary to meet projected expenditures, at current-law levels for the three programs combined, is $38.6 trillion,” reads the report.
“To put this very large figure in perspective, it would represent 4.3 percent of the present value of projected GDP over the same period ($907 trillion),” states the Trustees report.

The extra money needed to fund the unfunded liabilities would have to come from something other than payroll taxes, benefit taxes, and premium payments scheduled under current law.

The report also says that there is “a significant likelihood” that the “projected HI and SMI expenditures are substantially understated as a result of potentially impracticable elements of current law.”

The 2012 Medicare and Social Security trustees’ reports have been released (see here and here). The headline is that the Medicare Hospital Insurance (HI) trust fund will have insufficient reserves to pay full benefits beginning in 2024 (the same year that was projected in last year’s report). Social Security will have insufficient reserves beginning in 2033 (three years earlier than projected last year).

The trustees’ reports always contain some interesting information, and that’s true again this year.

In 2010 and 2011, the Office of the Actuary felt compelled to issue separate “alternative” analyses of projected future Medicare spending because the scheduled cuts in reimbursement rates for providers of services to Medicare patients are untethered to reality. If the Medicare cuts planned for in Obamacare were actually to go into effect, Medicare’s reimbursement rates would plummet below those provided even by Medicaid by the end of the decade. If rates fell that low, hospitals and other providers would have no choice but to stop taking care of Medicare enrollees, thus causing severe access problems for seniors. That’s a completely unrealistic scenario for political reasons — Congress would never let it happen — and the actuaries have repeatedly said so over the past three years.

Republican senators boycott hearing on Ariz. immigration lawBy Jordy Yager- 04-24-12 12:46 PM ETRepublicans on Tuesday boycotted a Democratic-led subcommittee hearing on Arizona’s controversial immigration bill.Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the ranking member of the subcommittee, called the hearing “election-year theater.” He said it would do nothing to further attempts at reforming the country’s immigration system. “This is not an attempt at having a sincere hearing on the merits," Cornyn said in a statement. "Unfortunately, the Democrat majority seems to have embraced President Obama's ‘mañana’ approach to immigration reform.” Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) also said the hearing was “strictly political theater” aimed at garnering publicity and trying to influence Wednesday’s oral arguments before the Supreme Court on the constitutionality of the state measure. “I will not participate in today’s hearing because it is strictly political theater,” Kyl said in a statement. “The timing of the hearing just one day ahead of the Supreme Court’s review of the law suggests that its purpose is either to influence the court’s decision or to garner publicity." Kyl blasted Democrats on the committee for not conferring with their Republican colleagues before slating the hearing, which was called by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). “[It] further demonstrates that it is intended to be more of a spectacle than a forum for learning anything useful for policymaking,” Kyl said. Former Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce (R), the architect of the controversial law, testified before the subcommittee on Tuesday and said none of the Republican senators had told him about their plans to not attend the hearing. Pearce said he was “disappointed” that they didn’t show up. None of the subcommittee’s other Republicans, including Sens. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), Orrin Hatch (Utah) or Jeff Sessions (Ala.), attended Tuesday’s hearing. Schumer and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) were the only Democratic members to attend. Sens. Patrick Leahy (Vt.), the chairman of the committee, Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), Al Franken (Minn.) and Richard Blumenthal (Conn.) also did not show up. Schumer and Durbin took turns peppering Pearce, former Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.), and Arizona state Sen. Steve Gallardo (D), with questions about the statute for nearly two hours. The hearing was entitled “Examining the Constitutionality and Prudence of State and Local Governments Enforcing Immigration Law.”

Whatever the ultimate outcome of the case against George Zimmerman for his shooting of Trayvon Martin, what has happened already is enough to turn the stomach of anyone who believes in either truth or justice.

An amazing proportion of the media has given us a painful demonstration of the thinking -- and lack of thinking -- that prevailed back in the days of the old Jim Crow South, where complexion counted more than facts in determining how people were treated.

One of the first things presented in the media was a transcript of a conversation between George Zimmerman and a police dispatcher. The last line in most of the transcripts shown on TV was that of the police dispatcher telling Zimmerman not to continue following Trayvon Martin.

That became the basis of many media criticisms of Zimmerman for continuing to follow him. Only later did I see a transcript of that conversation on the Sean Hannity program that included Zimmerman's reply to the police dispatcher: "O.K."

That reply removed the only basis for assuming that Zimmerman did in fact continue to follow Trayvon Martin. At this point, neither I nor the people who assumed that he continued to follow the teenager have any basis in fact for believing that he did or didn't.

Monday, April 23, 2012

Capitol Hill politicians are assessing tax changes that could let the Internal Revenue Service lay claim to a portion of the $18 trillion sitting in 401(k) accounts and other tax breaks used by middle-class workers, including cutting the mortgage tax deduction.
A commission looking for ways to close the deficit, and, noting the extent of 401(k) tax breaks, recommends an examination of the system as one way to prevent government bankruptcy.

Besides 401(k)s, other possibilities include the mortgage-interest deduction on second homes, as well as benefits from employer-provided health insurance, which are untaxed now.
Under current 401(k) rules, total employee/employer contributions can’t exceed $50,000. In the proposed rule change, employer/employee contributions would be limited to 20 percent of the employee’s compensation, with a maximum of $20,000, the so-called 20/20 proposal.
Another proposal being discussed in Congress says all tax deductions on 401(k)s and IRAs to be replaced with an 18 percent credit. The credit, according to a proposal that has been endorsed by economist William Gale, would be placed directly in a person’s retirement account.

After four decades that brought 12 million Mexican immigrants—more than half of them illegally—to the U.S., the curtain has come down on the biggest immigration wave in modern times, says a new study. "The net migration flow from Mexico to the United States has stopped and may have reversed," says the report, even as political battles over illegal immigration heat up and the issue heads to the U.S. Supreme Court.

On October 21, 2010, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) unveiled a national ad addressing our country’s spending addiction, the dangers of relentless deficits, and the corrosive nature of our national debt.

In today's New York Post, Benjamin Sasse and Charles Hurt report that the White House is again playing politics with Medicare. Obamacare guts Medicare Advantage, the popular market-based program to get Medicare coverage. (And it's very popular -- the program had 5.3 million enrollees in 2003, and now has 12 million. That includes more than one in three Medicare recipients in California and New York.) Suffice to say, many of those in the Medicare Advantage program would not be happy to find out about any changes to their Medicare plan before election day!

Sunday, April 22, 2012

A pril 29 will mark three years since Senate Democrats passed a budget. This dereliction of duty lagrantly violates the 1974 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act.

“On or before April 15 of each year, the Congress shall complete action on a concurrent resolution on the budget for the fiscal year,” this statute states. Senate Democrats could not care less about this federal law.

This is a milestone in human sloth. While it has taken Majority “Leader” Harry Reid of Nevada and Senate Democrats 36 months to conceive zero budgets, House Republicans have delivered two - one for each year they governed.

Nonetheless, Mr. Reid said on Feb. 3: “We do not need to bring a budget to the floor this year. It’s done. We don’t need to do it.”

“This is the wrong time to vote on the floor,” Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad, North Dakota Democrat, declared Tuesday. “I don’t think we will be prepared to vote before the election.”

Floor votes would require Senate Democrats to borrow and spend, which annoys taxpayers, or cut outlays, which aggravates liberal lobbyists and porcine government-employee unions. So, Senate Democrats break the law and demand continuing resolutions, which spend on autopilot.

Here’s how Reuters recently summed up the race for the White House: “The 2012 presidential election is more than six months away, but here is what we know so far: It is going to be close, it is going to be nasty, and the outcome could turn on a series of unpredictable events.” The argument that followed was balanced and intelligent, and nicely captured today’s conventional wisdom.

But the conventional wisdom may well be wrong. We don’t in fact “know” that the election will be close. Nor do we know that it will be nasty, or that it will turn on unpredictable events. To the contrary, if I had to put money down now, I’d bet that Mitt Romney will win an easy victory after a relatively predictable, issue-focused, and not-too-nasty campaign. Indeed, I’d bet Romney will win precisely if he runs such a campaign. But if he allows the race to degenerate into name-calling and gotcha gimmicks, he could lose. Democrats are better than Republicans at the small and nasty stuff.

The basic premise of the Founding Fathers was man’s right to his own life, to his own liberty, to the pursuit of his own happiness which means: man’s right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself

President Obama goes to a primary school to talk to the kids. After his talk he offers question time.

One little boy puts up his hand, and Obama asks him his name. " Walter," responds the little boy. "And what is your question, Walter?"

"I have four questions: First, What happened to private property rights and contract law when the Chrysler bondholders got 20 cents on the dollar and the UAW got the company? Second, Why do you keep saying you saved jobs when the percent working in this country keeps going down because we're not creating enough? Third, Why did you say that Jeremiah Wright was your mentor, then said that you knew nothing about his preaching and beliefs? Fourth, Why are we lending $ to Brazil to drill for oil, but you blocked the pipeline to bring crude to the U.S. from Canada?" Come to think of it, I've got five: Why did you say health care reforms would pay for themselves . . .

Just then, the bell rings for recess. Obama informs the kiddies that they will continue after recess.

When they resume Obama says, "OK, where were we? Oh, that's right: question time.. Who has a question?"

Another little boy puts up his hand. Obama points him out and asks him his name.
"Steve," he responds. "And what is your question, Steve?"

Actually, I have two questions. First, Why did the recess bell ring 20 minutes early?
Second, What the hell happened to Walter?"

The Obama years have proved to be a boon to the nation’s gun industry, which has posted strong gains in jobs, sales, economic impact and taxes paid in the teeth of an economic downturn.

The economic impact of the firearms and ammunition industry - a figure that includes jobs, taxes and sales - hit $31 billion in 2011, up from $19 billion in 2008, according to a survey released Thursday by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF). Background check requests for firearms purchases set records in 2010 and 2011, according to FBI data.

Friday, April 20, 2012

That’s what the Democrats’ slogan comes down to for the 2012 election. They can’t defend their records–either the Obama administration’s or the Democratic Senate’s–and they can’t talk about the economy. They can’t brag up their achievements, because they don’t have any. So their campaign will come down to: at least we aren’t those dreaded Republicans! Not exactly inspiring, but I suppose the Democrats’ base will find the theme persuasive.

If you doubt that this is the Democrats’ strategy, check out their new bumper sticker. This is an official product from Democrats.org, plugged in an email this morning by the Communications Director of the Democratic National Committee:

Barack Obama's re-election bid is already in deep trouble
Newt Gingrich may not have got the memo but the battle for the Republican nomination is over. Some in the Romney campaign were hoping for a February end but others were fearing it would go on until June and a small number of Republicans even predicted a convention fight in August.
All in all, April is not a bad result for Mitt Romney - long enough to test him, short enough to allow him to focus solely on the general for the final six months.
Despite the very recent and ugly and negative primaries, Romney's struggle with conservatives and the relative difficulty he had in overcoming a lacklustre field, Republicans - who tend to fall in line more readily than Democrats - are already uniting behind him.
President Barack Obama: in deep trouble
The RealClearPolitics poll average puts President Barack Obama at 47 percent and Romney at 44.2 percent - statistically insignificant lead of 2.2 percent.
Drill down into the numbers of the latest CBS poll and there are ominous signs for Obama. Only 33 percent of Americans believe the economy is moving in the right direction. A mere 16 percent feel they are getting ahead financially. Some 38 percent think their situation will get worse if Obama is re-elected, 26 percent think it will get better.
A cursory look back at incumbent versus challenger presidential races does not give Obama much comfort.
In April 1976, President Gerald Ford was in about the same position as Obama is now. He lost the 1976 general election to Jimmy Carter by two points. In April 1980, President Jimmy Carter was leading Ronald Reagan by 38 points to 32 points with John Anderson on 22. In November 1980, Reagan won by 10 points.
In April 1992, President George H.W. Bush was on 46 percent and Bill Clinton on 26 percent. In November 1992, Clinton won by six points. In April 2004, President George W. Bush was on 50 percent and John Kerry on 44 percent. In November 2004, Bush won by two points.
We are already past the point at which it seems plausible that 2012 will be a repeat of 1996 when the incumbent (Clinton) cruised to a comfortable eight-point victory over the challenger (Bob Dole). Rather, we are probably looking at a 1992 scenario - an incumbent defeat - or a 2004 race - the incumbent (or the challenger) eking out a narrow victory.
All the signs are that Obama will try to do to Romney what Bush did to Kerry in 2004 - make the election turn on the character of the challenger rather than being a referendum on the incumbent. It was brutal, it was ugly and it was a process of grinding out a win on the basis of consolidating the Republican base and dividing the country.
The Romney campaign, which includes a number of people who helped map out and execute that strategy for Bush, is all too aware of the dangers of Romney falling into the same trap as Kerry and allowing himself to be defined by Obama.
Romney may be a wealthy, somewhat aloof blue blood from Massachusetts but he is no John Kerry. Indeed, the central part of his biography - the turnaround businessman - is almost ideally suited to this election, which is likely to be a transactional one in which voters ask: "Who can best deal with this economy?"
Just as Bush's allies turned what seemed to be Kerry's biggest strength - his Vietnam record in an election about national security - against him by a merciless "Swiftboating", Obama will seek to do the same to Romney by making his business record about pillaging from the poor.
But Americans are much less likely than Europeans to succumb to the temptations of class warfare. If he is to pull it off, Obama needs to do much better than jibing that he was not "born with a silver spoon in my mouth" and demanding Romney's tax returns.
The slow improvement in the economy thus far in 2012 might not help Obama, just as better numbers did not stop George H.W. Bush losing to Clinton in 1992. In fact, Bush's insistence that things were getting better when few in the country felt that way added insult to injury and made him seem out of touch.
Obama can't talk about the economy being bad because he would be held responsible for it. But going too far in talking it up could be just as disastrous. Politically, he has to thread the needle.
Romney's likeability numbers are anaemic at this stage but they may well not need to be. To paraphrase Obama's ill-judged snipe at Hillary Clinton in 2008, he could well be "likeable enough" already, given that the focus will in all likelihood be on Obama.
Obama will keep trying to talk about something, anything other than the economy - contraception and dogs being the most recent examples - but Romney has the relatively straightforward task of being disciplined enough to talk relentlessly about jobs and the economy.
Certainly, Romney will never win the "guy you'd like to have a beer with" test, as Bush did in 2000. But 2012 will not be about that - there's more at stake than in 2000. And as Nate Silver argues, Romney has room to grow and favourability ratings at this stage are unreliable indicators for November.
If you viewed all this solely through the prism of media coverage and listened just to Washington pundits, you'd conclude that Obama has about an 80 percent chances of victory. In reality, his chances are much closer to 50:50, perhaps even with Romney holding an advantage (though many things can and will happen in six months).
This cognitive dissonance is partly because of a liberal tilt but also because most reporters and talking heads live in bubbles of comfortable affluence insulated from the economic pain most Americans are facing.
Even without factoring in the likely negative political impact of, say, Obamacare being struck down by the Supreme Court in June, Obama's re-election bid is already in deep trouble.
Only a fool would underestimate Obama's campaign machine, his ability to raise money and the fact that he remains personally likeable to a majority of Americans despite the state of the country. Anyone who argues at this stage that Obama is doomed to defeat is deluding themselves.
But the reality of this campaign is that it is likely to be brutal, very close - and could well result in Mitt Romney becoming the 45th President of the United States next January 20th.
________
London Daily Mail

Thursday, April 19, 2012

'Let me get this straight . . ..
We're going to be "gifted" with a health care plan we are forced to purchase andfined if we don't,
Which purportedly covers at leastten million more people,without adding a single new doctor,
but provides for 16,000 new IRS agents, written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn't understand it, passed by a Congress that didn't read it (butexempted themselves from it),
and signed by a Dumbo President who smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief who
didn't pay his taxes, for which we'll be taxed for four years before any
benefits take effect, by a congress which has already bankrupted Social Security and Medicare,
all to be overseen by an obese surgeon general and financed by a country that's broke!!

Households make budgets. So do businesses and nonprofits. There was also a time when Congress made them, but those days are long gone -- 1,086 days gone, to be precise. That's the last time Democrats, who have controlled one or both houses of Congress this whole time, passed a budget resolution through either the House or the Senate.

On April 15, 2010, both houses failed to meet the statutory deadline for passing a budget for the first time ever. Although the Senate Budget Committee would later pass a plan out of committee, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., blocked it from the floor, going so far as to prevent even a debate about the budget.

Asked to explain this bicameral failure in the face of trillion-dollar deficits, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said, "It's difficult to pass budgets in election years." Turns out, it is also difficult to get re-elected when you don't pass budgets. Later that same year, House Democrats lost 63 seats.

Senate Democrats lost six seats in 2010 but managed to retain control of the upper chamber. Surely, in the nonelection year of 2011 they would bring a budget to the floor, right? Wrong. Reid told reporters at the time, "There's no need to have a Democratic budget," adding, "It would be foolish for us to do a budget at this stage." In July 2011, Reid's assistant leader, Dick Durbin, D-Ill., went so far as to claim on national television that Republican filibusters prevented a budget from passing. He must have known he was fibbing -- under Senate rules, budget resolutions can pass with a simple majority.

In fact, Democrats just wanted to focus on attacking the "Path to Prosperity" budget proposed by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said, "To put other budgets out there is not the point." As Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner would later say, "We don't have a definitive solution ... We just don't like yours."

Fast forward to this past Monday, when Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., announced he would attempt to pass a Democratic budget out of his committee for the first time since 2009. Conrad even held a press conference Tuesday during which he released a budget document nearly identical to the Bowles-Simpson deficit reduction plan that President Obama rejected in 2010.

But Reid quickly moved to quash this plan, and Conrad, who is retiring after this year, backed off at the eleventh hour. "This is the wrong time to vote in committee; this is the wrong time to vote on the floor," Conrad told reporters late yesterday afternoon.

It is no coincidence that the Democrats' failure to pass a budget began immediately after Obamacare became law. In order to hide its $1.7 trillion price tag and $500 billion in tax increases through 2022, Democrats had already exhausted every last budgeting gimmick. As a result, they had no further tricks up their sleeve to pay for the rest of their spending priorities without voting on the massive tax increases that Conrad's new budget contained -- $2.6 trillion, and not just on the rich.

Put yourself in the shoes of the half-dozen vulnerable Democratic senators who are up for re-election this year. Would you want to vote for that?

That is why Reid forced Conrad to pull his budget, even knowing that such a move would create an embarrassing spectacle. To paraphrase another politician, "We're running for office, for Pete's sake!"